Swizz Beatz Talks Feds Linking Him to Megaupload

When shuttered file-sharing website Megaupload asked the Federal court to dismiss its case against the United States earlier this month—stating that the U.S. law doesn’t allow criminal proceedings against foreign companies—the Feds responded by saying that they’re looking for an opening to go after Swizz Beatz and serve him a court summons in the country to put the company on trial.

When Feds shut down the website this past January, due to violating privacy laws, Swizzy was listed as the CEO of the company. He even made a promotional video, “The Mega Song,” recruiting the likes of friends Diddy, Kanye West and will.i.am. But days after news broke about Megaupload shutting down hit the masses, Swizzy’s attorney announced that his client was not the CEO of the website.

All along, Swizzy has remained relatively silent…until now. Talking to Al Lindstrom, Swizz talked about his name being attached to Megaupload.

“I’m a fan of people that work hard and I would never be apart of anything that’s taking anything from an artist when I fight so hard to give so much to the artist,” he said. “What I was doing was giving the artist 90% of they shit, you know what I’m saying? And sometimes when something is so powerful and people can’t control it, that type of attack happens.

“You see that happen with multiple things in life—you see things that happen and you shut down the unexplainable,” he added. “I’m like, ‘Yo, that company ain’t never been sued for any of those things’ You can’t go there and download anything. It’s megaupload, not megadownload. Right?"

Actually, it’s wrong. Megaupload did allow users to both upload and download content.

Still, Swizzy believes that Feds are gunning after him and the company a little too hard.

“There’s other companies doing things ten times worse things than that and they ain’t being touched,” the Grammy Award-winning producer (for Jay-Z’s “On To The Next One”) said. “My thing is like time will tell everything. People will see what’s what and who’s who, all of this shit here. I’m not gonna sit here and answer all those questions, because I can’t.

“My track record speaks for itself—I ain’t never been on a track record as a Grammy person of doing anything ignorant,” he said. “I’m in the business of inspiring and I can’t be in the business of inspiring if I’m so called ‘robbing my friends,’ you know what I’m saying? And my friends know that, that’s why ain’t nobody spoke out and said no clown shit about me. They know my character and they know what it is.”

As recently court filings suggested, as reported by TorrentFreak, U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride claims that Swizzy represented Megaupload in front of the U.S. Trade Representative in December of last year, thus alleging that he’s officially involved with the company. That would make him an eligible recipient of a court summons on behalf of the company.

January’s indictment alleged that Megaupload cost copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated music, films and other content, as reported by the Associated Press.—Mark Lelinwalla